Even though you are probably sitting down right now to read this, you’d be helping lessen your chance of diabetes if you read this standing up! Yes, and some good may also be found in all those boring or semi-boring year-end parties, too, now, but only if you spend most of your time standing. Who knew! Anything which helps lessen diabetes or helps diabetics is no laughing matter, and as I mulled over what to post right now (and I wasn’t standing, drinking mulled wine), I finally decided on this strange item. It is SO simple, that anyone can begin to do this, and make a change for the better.

What’s the research? “Physiologists analyzing obesity, heart disease, and diabetes found that the act of sitting shuts down the circulation of a fat-absorbing enzyme called lipase. They found that standing up engages muscles and promotes the distribution of lipase, which prompts the body to process fat and cholesterol, independent of the amount of time spent exercising. They also found that standing up uses blood glucose and may discourage the development of diabetes.”

Sitting is not benign; it’s passive, but it’s a serious step in the wrong direction, if you spend most of your time doing it.

“Chair time is an insidious hazardbecause people haven’t been told it’s a hazard,” Marc Hamilton, Ph.D., a professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri in Columbia.

In evolutionary terms, we certainly were meant to move around, and only sit to rest when needed, just like other animals. As we have become more social, other actions have started that may be detrimental to our basic physiology, and our best interests.

We do not have to be constantly exercising, or even moving all the time, but evidently, our physiology gets “key” triggering when we stand!

Sitting seems to put our physiology into a ‘parking mode’. Who wants that! Especially in today’s world, we want to burn-off our easily-found food, otherwise we will become obese. Our thrifty-gene just parks the food calories for times when ‘famine’ will happen. Now, famines rarely do. Our 100,000 year old body doesn’t know that!

So, the best thing is to work WITH your body.

In the United States alone, 47 million people have Syndrome X – a metabolic disease which is part of a biochemical freeway to heart disease and diabetes, as well as to obesity. Triggering better biochemistry and making better food choice (alkaline foods, alkaline spring waters, whole sea salt to help alkaize your body and attain alkaline pH in your body’s tissues) are all things that can reverse the slippery-slope, in my opinion. Now, the scientists are telling us to stand up more.

Maybe that’s yet another reason why symphony conductors traditionally live such long, quality lives. Apart from the vital energy field of the music, and the aerobic exercise via the arms, these people spend huge amounts of time just standing-up. No one ever realised standing’s power until recently.

The photo above is clear evidence! Here’s why.

“”The existing data, by numerous studies, are starting to show that the rates of heart disease and diabetes and obesity are doubled or sometimes even tripled in people who sit a lot,” Dr. Hamilton explains. One reason, he says, is an enzyme called lipase. When it’s on, fat is absorbed into the muscles, but when we sit down, lipase virtually shuts off.

Instead, the fat will recirculate in the blood stream and go and be stored as body fat or it can clog arteries and cause diseases,” Dr. Hamilton says. And it’s not a small amount of fat. Plasma samples were taken from the same person after eating the same meal. When they ate sitting down, the sample was cloudy, but when they ate while standing up, it was clear.”

Again, see the photos above!

Stand up when you are watching your children play, rather than sitting in the bleachers. Better still, if it’s something you can join in, then do. When you are at work, stand up to do tasks as often as possible. Maybe even see how your monitor and keyboard can accomodate that. Have a lectern to place your laptop on. Eat lunch standing while you look out a window. Find ways to not seem weird, if that concerns you, but even getting up more often to stand, stretch, walk a little around your cubicle will all add up to help.

I wanted to introduce this subject while many of you will have Holiday time over these next 2 weeks. If you start the “habit” in a less stressful surrounding and do this every day, by the time you return to the usual work day in 2 weeks, you will be a long way toward the 21 days it usually takes to successfully ingrain a new habit.

So, with cocktail parties, family gatherings, quiet time, whatever, just start. Knowing that standing will improve your health SO much, will help you get better results.

Happy Holy Days to all.

— Em

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Why I Am So Passionate About This!

The prevention of type 2 diabetes, especially, is looming as one of the most pressing public health concerns of the 21st century ... with ever-increasing numbers of teens and children being diagnosed ... with two-thirds of U.S. adults now overweight or obese and, therefore, seriously at-risk.
Type 2 diabetes is mostly preventable, through education and action. So, it is outrageous that the number of people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes is rising, world-wide, and the age they are stricken with it is falling!

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